Coronation Street has revealed one of it's most harrowing storylines yet, with factory owner Aidan Connor set to take his own life next week.

And show boss Kate Oates has revealed the plot was so confronting that she offered staff the opportunity to opt out of working on it.

"Obviously, we're a massive company at Coronation Street and everyone has a very different experience of suicide and for some people working on these episodes it's really tough and we wanted to pay attention to that so we wrote to everybody saying, 'You don't need to work on these episodes if you don't want to,'" she said.

The outgoing chief - who will be replaced by Emmerdale boss Iain MacLeod in June - said therapists were called in after she had 'frank' conversations with staff members about their own devastating experiences.

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Kate Oates allowed staff to opt out of working on the storyline (Image: REX/Shutterstock)

"I have had meetings and discussions and coffees with people in departments I don't cross with every day and we've had the most frank conversations where they've shared their own experiences of family members, friends because they want to talk about it and I've walked out of rooms feeling really close to people," she added.

The suicide will not be shown in the hour-long special on Monday, May 7. Instead, viewers will see Aidan's dad Johnny Connor (Richard Hawley) discover his lifeless body in the bathroom after he fails to show up for work.

The remainder of the week will see his friends and neighbours struggle to work out what went wrong, questioning why they didn't notice how troubled Aidan (Shayne Ward) was.

However Shayne shockingly revealed that his character had been planning to take his own life for a lot longer than anyone knew.

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He even posted a suicide note to his family earlier in the year - but managed to intercept it after deciding to donate his kidney to half-sister Carla Connor (Alison King) in a desperate bid to "do some good".

"He had actually planned to do this sooner but then Carla was sick and needed a kidney he saw this as a way to finally do something good. But by this point he had decided that he was going to take his own life and posted the letter," Shayne revealed.

"When he found out about Carla and he intercepted the letter the next day from the postman outside his dad’s flat. He stopped his family seeing the suicide note and he didn’t go ahead with his plan at that point.

One of the last people he sees is his ex-girlfriend Eva Price, who has just had his baby

"There was a moment in the hospital when he was crying his eyes out, but tragically he kept all of that from his family, so there were no tell tale signs for his family to see. He didn’t talk to anyone about how he was feeling," he continued.

"Everyone around him was so happy that it had been successful. He didn’t want to burden anyone with his thoughts."

Explaining how Aidan reached the point that he killed himself, Shayne said that his character had "always been quite troubled".

Aidan postponed his suicide to donate his kidney to half-sister Carla (Image: ITV)

"The thing is everybody is going to be thinking were there any tell tale signs that Aidan was feeling suicidal? You can’t pin it down to one particular thing that has happened to him over the years," he said. "He has cheated, he has lost people their jobs, he had a hard relationship with his dad, he has always wanted to prove himself to his father but hasn’t quite succeeded.

"He has always been quite troubled. But is isn’t always possible to spot a person is struggling to cope with life."